


the thing with feathers

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Series: trope bingo fills [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Wings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Wing Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24056500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: After Shiro comes back from the dead, he starts molting.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: trope bingo fills [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1679653
Comments: 15
Kudos: 144





	the thing with feathers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [goddessarashi](https://twitter.com/goddessarashi), using [redluxite’s trope bingo ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/redluxite)(Prompt B5: They have wings")
> 
> [Originally posted on twitter](https://twitter.com/boggremlin/status/1242611084063838209); this thread has been revised and expanded.

After Shiro comes back from the dead, he starts molting. 

It’s a thousand times worse than that time he tried to grow out his undercut. He looks terrible, his flight equilibrium is fucked to hell, and everything itches. Since he’s down an arm, he can barely even preen; he’s lopsided, cranky, and the wing on that side keeps tipping him over. His wingspan was always a challenge to navigate in close quarters, because harpy eagle wings are about as big as a person can get. Now he’s big _and_ unkempt. 

He decides, grimly, that he’s going to appreciate every prickly, uncomfortable moment. Shiro is grateful. He’s alive, with a body again: he’s lucky he didn’t lose a wing. He is not going to complain, especially not within earshot of Keith. 

Shiro feels like he barely knows Keith these days, what with the watered-down memories from his clone and the years Keith lived through on the back of the space whale. Shiro’s memories of not-quite-his behavior are less than promising; .

He can’t shake the feeling that being tentative isn’t something that suits Keith, especially as he is now: Keith’s matured, and his wings and ear-tufts are glossy and tipped beautifully dark. The usual long-eared owl patterns have violet mixed in with the black and gold and it’s oddly stunning, oddly subtle; Shiro wonders if that’s a Galra thing, especially since meeting Krolia. 

Keith looks like he’s come into his own, and Shiro’s achingly glad of it. It was hard for Keith at the Garrison, because everyone there had a superstitious, gut-level distrust of owls. _Too many myths humming around about them_ , Iverson used to say, and that wasn’t inaccurate. 

Shiro remembers snapping at Mitch for that speciesist remark, but he knows Keith heard it anyway, and heard worse when Shiro wasn’t around. Just about everyone had a story about how an owl meant that death was coming soon, and the way Keith flew in formation — silent unless he felt like clapping his wings in irritation, or executing dives and maneuvers that would have gotten a recruit with falcon wings killed — seemed to bring out the worst in his classmates. The Garrison didn't have an explicit policy prohibiting people with owl wings, but the higher-ups turned a blind eye to an awful lot of harassment. 

But those days are gone, so distant that Shiro occasionally doubts his own memory. He shifts in the little nest Keith arranged in Black’s cargo hold, pretending that he’s fine, he’s fine, his feathers aren’t bothering him.

Keith’s not an idiot, though, and he can tell that Shiro is uncomfortable. Anyone with eyes can tell that Shiro is uncomfortable, and Keith’s vision is better than most.

“Do you…want help?” Keith offers, tentatively. His ear-tufts are relaxed back, like he’s trying to comfort Shiro, or make himself seem   
smaller. Shiro’s already bigger than Keith, has always been much bigger: now he’s also voluminous with unshed plumes. Keith shouldn’t be nervous around a man whose wings look like they’re on the wrong end of a dust bath. 

He shakes his wings a little awkwardly, nearly knocking himself over and disrupting one corner of the little nest. Shiro would rather be ridiculous than make Keith feel unsure. “What gave you that idea?”

“A hunch,” Keith says, straight-faced: but his ear-tufts flick up a bit, and his wings fluff, appeased. He’s always been more social than he lets on. 

“All right, then,” Shiro sighs and resettles himself in the nest, hooding his wings up around his shoulders. 

“You’d do the same for me,” Keith says, and moves to sit behind him.

It feels good to have Keith preen him. Keith’s nails are sharp and tender; he finger-combs through Shiro’s crest, delicately picking out the old feather sheaths and settling the new growth in the right direction. Shiro could almost fall asleep, except he’s still a little leery of unconsciousness. And, more to the point: he’s missed this. Keith has never asked to groom Shiro before, but they’ve known each other long enough (and Keith was young enough when they met, still molting his juvenile feathers) that Shiro has scrubbed his hands through a stubborn spot to get at stuck, old feathers in the hard-to-reach space between Keith’s wings, and Keith has occasionally returned the favor. After Shiro escaped (and then Keith had to rescue him from the Garrison), for one: Shiro wasn’t awake for it, he came to after his feathers had been carefully put to rights, but who else could it have been? 

This is different, but. There’s comfort to be had, for both of them. 

“The new feathers are white,” Keith says after a while, as he carefully grooms the wide span of one spread wing. It hurts when he resettles Shiro’s pinion feathers, but it’s a good hurt. It’s a hurt that says, _hey: you’re alive_. 

“All of them?” No one has a mirror, except for Lance, and no one likes to ask if they can borrow it; it’s not worth the drama. Shiro sighs. “Well, so much for flying under the radar.” He’s so big that having dark plumage was just about the only way he could blend in, back when they did flight formations at the Garrison. He hadn’t really needed to blend in — Shiro’s always had more raw power than stealth to his name — though it was nice to have the option. His old plumage was slate-and-shadow colored. 

Sure enough, the growing pile of shed mantle and scapular feathers are all black-grey, and when Shiro arches his neck and twists to look at his wings, he sees the new growth coming through. It’s like watered-down moonlight coming through cloud cover. It looks wretched. It looks like he’s been splashed with a pail of dirty dishwater. 

“Good thing I’m not vain,” he tells Keith. It’s a lie. Shiro’s a little vain. 

“They match your hair,” Keith says. He stops grooming Shiro’s wing long enough to reach up and scratch gently at Shiro’s nape, a little consolation. Shiro can’t help but croon at the touch, and then he’s bowled over. 

Keith shoves himself under Shiro’s spread wing — Shiro folds it in out of instinct, pulling Keith close, sheltering him — until Keith’s properly in Shiro’s arms, shoved into Shiro’s lap in the nest Keith made for him. 

Shiro mantles his wings up and over the both of them, though the gesture is somewhat ruined by a shower of feather particles. Never mind the mess: Keith is mewing in distress and all Shiro can do is stroke Keith’s wings, which are folded so tight along his spine that he’s in danger of crimping a flight feather. 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, helplessly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to die, I didn’t mean to leave you.” He’d forgotten how soft Keith’s feathers are, so much softer than Shiro’s own. 

“I know,” Keith sounds miserable, cheeping like a grieving chick. “It’s okay.” 

“It is okay,” Shiro says. Carefully, he resettles Keith’s coverts, strokes his primaries. “You saved me, huh? You saved me. I’m right here. In all my disgusting glory.”

“You’re not disgusting,” Keith protests, but Shiro thinks he almost got a laugh from that. “Shiro, you’re so important.” 

The “to me” is unspoken, but no less audible for it. Shiro hunkers down lower over Keith and buries his face in the crown of Keith’s head, where his hair segues into feathers. Keith smells the way he always has, dusty and warm.

“I can be important,” Shiro says, very seriously, “and still look like a disaster.”

This does get a laugh — better, it gets a _squawk_ , and Keith raises his head to bump noses with Shiro. They nuzzle back and forth, Shiro making little soothing chirps and Keith making low _whoo-whoo_ sounds in the back of his throat. 

“It’s okay,” Shiro says again. Keith almost looks like he’ll believe him. “Now will you get started on my other wing?”

**Author's Note:**

> I have never written wing!fic and frankly was not super familiar with it, but this was fun! 
> 
> In this AU, people tend to view Keith as untrustworthy/bad luck/etc., since owls are so different: nocturnal, different flight mechanics, kinda scary!!! Many cultures consider owls to be ill-omens, though I didn't spend too much time on that concept here. 
> 
> Long-eared owls are actually pretty sociable (they’ll roost together for safety), so I imagine there’s a little bit of an “ugliest duckling” situation going on. 
> 
> Preening like this is pair-bonding behavior (and, uh, long eared owls and harpy eagles do mate for life, just saying). 
> 
> Shiro: harpy eagle wings (they are huge birds and also they have a funny crest of feathers that reminds me of his floof)  
> Keith: long-eared owl wings  
> Lance: probably flame bowerbird wings, he's incredibly extra  
> Hunk: brown booby wings (they have yellow feet!)  
> PIdge: pigeon wings, she'll mess you up  
> Allura: roc wings (mythical bird)  
> Coran: quetzal wings  
> Krolia: masked owl wings (not a true owl, related to the barn owl genus)


End file.
